4.5 What if we are gathering for the world?

Women Moving the Edge Part 4

Our guiding questions were many in that first gathering in Belgium, most of them related to the topic of Women and Leadership. Not in the sense of business’ women taking (more) leadership, but we wanted to inquire into a new and more wider interpretation of this concept. We wanted to integrate more the elements of support, care, grounding etc. Soon enough it dawned on us that we were doing something bigger, something beyond an inquiry into this nicely stated topic. The questions came up: “What if we are gathering for the world? Not just for ourselves? And from a design perspective: how to help this bigger unfolding?” After all, the invitation stated we were about ‘moving the edge of consciousness’. But how would that translate in actions, day to day life, projects, etc?

We had high hopes for what could emerge in the space between us. Still it was quite a challenge to create something collective; while starting with individual participants that didn’t know each other beforehand. How to move into the space collectively? Finn had talked about the magic in the middle: it needed all of us before it could be there.

Both being trainers and consultants, Judy and myself had hopes for the forming of a community and paid work that could come out of the network of participants in the gathering or some projects afterwards. It didn’t happen the way we envisioned it. We realized later – as we would encounter similar expectations in others in the next gatherings – that whenever these expectations were driven by our patterns of anxiety or other ego-stuff, it wouldn’t work; these collective gatherings were not intended to support any personal motivation! They were in service of a bigger evolutionary unfolding.

There’s one more piece that has to do with our framing of how you recreate the world. The world is recreated through this practice. Change happens through this practice, but it’s change that isn’t manipulated. It is change that is evoked from the inside out.
– Interview by Otto Scharmer with Circle of Seven

Next 4.6: Opening to Authentic Collective Wisdom
Download this article: